Yoga Cross Training for Athletes and Performers

Yoga is a perfect tool for cross-training and refining specific abilities and strengths.

Yoga is a broad term for an entire library of techniques and disciplines. Separate facets of Yoga can benefit specific needs that are encountered by athletes and performers of all types.

Yoga practice gives swimmers additional extension and range of motion. Runners feel relief from shin splints, strains, and inflammation from impact. Dancers improve postures and positions. Singers and actors gain control of their breathing. Balance and stability improve for archers, sharpshooters, acrobats, and cyclists.

It matters not at all what activity you practice or what skill level you have achieved. Yoga will improve your performance.

Strangely enough, the greatest benefits are often experienced by people who are expert in their physical discipline. When a body is performing at championship level, the limitations one is dealing with are based in muscle extension and flexibility. Yoga helps unblock performance barriers and increase capabilities by bringing oxygen to the muscles while stretching them and strengthening each individual muscle.

Many are surprised to learn that Yoga can increase lung capacity, even in a competitive athlete. This is because most physical activities are based upon muscle contraction. The functional strength of the body is trained to be most effective when muscles are under extreme contraction. This causes athletes to hold their muscles under tension because the mind is expecting the body to work well only when muscles are tensed (contracted). By constantly subjecting muscles to tension, their effective range eventually shortens. When the chest and abdomen muscles no longer extend to their full and proper length, breathing is made more shallow and lung capacity is diminished. Yoga focuses upon training muscles to function with strength and control when fully extended. Breathing exercises extend chest and abdomen muscles, allowing the lungs to inflate fully. Lung capacity is increased. The amount of oxygen available for use by the body is increased. And performance, whether swimming, dancing, singing, running, or lifting, is improved.

Yoga decreases the chance of injury. By training muscles to perform well while extended (relaxed), Yoga improves resistance to strains, tears, and bruising. The muscles own strength is the protector. Weak muscles are more easily injured. Most physical training focuses on contraction of muscles to produce strength. Yoga protects muscles by training them to develop and perform while extended. Yoga-trained muscles are stronger at rest than are muscles that have experienced only weight and endurance training.

Yoga improves balance. Better balance improves performance and protects against accidental injury. Other physical disciplines focus on strength and rapid reflexes to maintain proper balance during movement. Yoga trains the mind, as well as the body, to maintain balance and stability in any posture. When the mind and body are teamed to maintain balance, when proper posture and balance are reflexively maintained, muscles are not required to work as hard just to keep the body upright. This leaves more physical resources available for performance. And a well balanced body will not stumble and/or fall as often, will not be subjected to as many unexpected twists and impacts, and will not be injured as much as an untrained body.

Takibi Yoga, modeled from Bikram Yoga, incorporates one more protective element into the Yoga scenario, heat. "Hot room" Yoga combines the heat being generated from within your body with the ambient heat of the room to relax, lengthen, and protect muscles. You experience the best workout of your life while protected against injury by natures own relaxant, heat.

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